Water-Food Nexus Assessment in Agriculture: A Systematic Review

The Water-Food Nexus (WF) has been proposed to reach equitable, balanced, and sustainable access to water and food resources in the face of the growing population demand. Therefore, developing models to assess them has become more relevant. This work systematically reviews the literature on the tools used to evaluate water and food resources between 2002 and 2020. Furthermore, it reports a critical analysis of the software used to assess the WF Nexus quantitatively. The models analyzed were Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Common Agricultural Policy Regional Impact (CAPRI), Global Food and Water System (GFWS), Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), Water Evaluation And Planning system (WEAP), and Soil Water Atmosphere Plant (SWAP). We deduced that the following are necessary in evaluating the WF Nexus: (1) the capacity to generate future scenarios, (2) a global application, and (3) the application in case studies. The present paper is the first review to provide an overview of the software applied to evaluate WF Nexus, including the advantages and disadvantages of the tools found. They can help build sustainability criteria when designing policies that reduce water and food security risks and promote efficient water and food use.